


Fragments

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Zone Blanche | Black Spot (TV)
Genre: F/F, Kissing, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23261368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: There must once have been a time when the forest hadn’t made Camille sick with dread, but for the life of her she can't remember when.
Relationships: Camille Laugier/Laurène Weiss
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5
Collections: All The Nice Things Flash Exchange 2020





	Fragments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



There must once have been a time when the forest hadn’t made Camille sick with dread. It couldn’t have been so very long ago either, although when she tried to pinpoint when it started the moment proved elusive. Marion’s death seemed like it ought to be the obvious answer, but even before then the straight sentinels of the Scots pines loomed darkly in her mind, and she had to keep going further and further back: when Gérald Steiner began to step up the demands he was making on her, or the moment the understanding she had with him, that _ever_ _yone_ in Villefranche had with him, began by gradual, almost imperceptible increments, to resemble something much darker.

In the moments when she couldn’t catch her breath or quieten her racing thoughts, when her heart went speeding ahead of her and it felt like she’d never catch up, she couldn’t seem to remember a time when she hadn’t been afraid, when she hadn’t woken up in the night with the sensation of feathers against her face and talons and beaks raking her skin. It felt as if her fear was an ink stain, seeping through her life to colour everything it touched, including her memories. At those times she couldn’t even bury herself in her textbook and her studies because the dry repetition of facts and law were merely another reminder of everything she’d done, and every one of her betrayals, small and large, returned with crystal clarity.

Even her All-Nighter, the first time she’d caught a glimpse behind the curtain, of something sacred that she’d never been a part of, but which almost everyone else, even those who didn’t explicitly believe, seemed to take for granted, was tainted.

She still dreamed of that night. Still jerked awake in the depths of the night, with the memory of waking stiff and aching but euphoric, and gazing up at the trunks of the trees, wreathed with mist, her lungs filled with the scent of crushed pine needles and moss, damp earth and iron. With a memory of the voices hidden in the sound of the wind stirring the moonlight-silvered branches, and the sound of something old and sacred calling out to whatever it was that ran in her blood.

She didn’t belong to the forest in the same way that some did – Laurène, Hermann, Sabine, even Gérald Steiner – but it was there, however weak, and for the first time in her life she’d felt recognised, as though she could be something more than she was.

What had come to her then was Laurène, the girl who’d gone missing, whom the forest had taken and then given back. The adults had never talked about her disappearance much. That was the way things were in Villefranche, the way they’d always been, subject to the tacit agreement that there were some things it was better not to talk about. People got lost in the forest. And sometimes, very occasionally, they found their way back out again.

It was different among the young. Those who were gearing up to run their own all-night gauntlets on the cold forest floor. To the young people of Villefranche the disappearance and subsequent return of Laurène Weiss took on near-mythical proportions and Camille was no different. She’d seen the articles about Laurène Weiss’s disappearance, the greyscale photo of Laurène in speckled newsprint, different in some ways, unchanged in others – she still had the same unstudied beauty, the same unthinking confidence. To Camille, Laurène Weiss had never seemed quite real somehow, as though she were a changeling, a creature of the forest.

And now that creature of the forest was waiting for her, sitting on the hood of the car and gazing out over the lake.

As Camille approached, she couldn’t see Laurène’s face, only a narrow sliver of her profile, and for a moment it seemed as if it wasn’t the face of the woman she knew, her colleague and friend, but the face of the girl from the newsprint, the eighteen year old who got lost in the forest and never quite found her way out again. Then Laurène lifted her head to watch her coming, and Camille faltered, struck by the feeling that she was intruding on something private.

Then Laurène tilted her head in acquiescence or invitation, and Camille kept coming, her hands damp with sweat. She searched Laurène’s face for any sign of reluctance, but Laurène was already looking away, back out over the lake.

Cautiously, Camille perched on the hood of the car beside her.

“I thought…” she said, because she couldn’t say nothing, even if she wished she could, “when you left Sabine’s...”

“I needed some air.” ‘Some space’ went implied, unspoken.

The silence lingered, and Camille itched, half-wishing she hadn’t come, that she’d made an excuse or pretended to have missed the message, and knowing too that she could never have done either. And still she could think of nothing to say: she’d spent so long having to think through everything she did before she did it, overthinking every action, every off-the-cuff comment, and she was tired. All the things she couldn’t say had a way of crowding out everything else, so that they were all she could think of, particularly when she was nervous. And dear God, was she nervous now.

The lake was still and flat as glass, fringed by the dark line of the forest at the far edge. The reflections in the glassy water made it seem as if the trees were creeping closer. The moon hung suspended on the surface, made ragged by the rippling water.

“It’s a beautiful night,” she said finally, because that at least felt safe. “Almost peaceful. The sort of night when nothing bad could ever happen.”

Laurène glanced at her, an eyebrow raised. “Except in Villefranche?”

“Except in Villefranche,” Camille admitted.

There was another long moment of silence. The weight of it felt like a clenched fist in her chest, around her throat. When Laurène spoke again, she wasn’t looking at Camille, but at the trees across the still moonlit surface of the lake. Her voice was soft and quiet, as if what she was about to share was something private, meant for Camille alone. “My All-Nighter happened on a night like this,” she said.

Camille let out a breath.

“Are you going back out there tonight?” One of the things she was not allowed to say. It led down dangerous paths, ones where the ground was far too treacherous.

When Laurène didn’t answer, Camille looked at her and she knew the answer. It was a story told in the shadows beneath Laurène’s eyes, in the mornings when Camille would arrive at the station early to find Laurène stripped to her bra with the scent of the forest still on her hair, and know that she never went home the night before.

It seemed to be happening more and more often these days. Marion’s disappearance had made it worse, but whatever it was that Laurène was searching for in the forest, it was far more than just Marion Steiner.

“If it was Cora,” Laurène said, “I’d want someone to be looking for her.”

“Cora’s nothing like the Steiner girl,” Camille said.

As betrayal’s went, it was a minor one, but her heart twisted in her chest anyway. _I’m sorry,_ she thought, summoning up Marion’s face, her expression of accusation, of outrage, of hurt. _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. If I could take it back, I would._

“She’s out there,” Laurène said. “And whoever took her is out there too. Somebody has to find them.”

“Don’t.” Camille spoke before she realised she was going to. Before she had the chance to run what she was going to say through her mind before speaking, to make sure it was safe. She reached out and grasped Laurène’s hand. “Not tonight.”

Laurène looked down at their interlinked hands resting on her leg. She was holding herself very still, and for a long moment Camille was certain she’d pull away, tug her her hand free, tell Camille _no,_ that this was wrong, inappropriate, that she was not and never would be interested. Then she softened, the tension in her shoulders eased, and her cool slender fingers twined tightly through Camille’s.

Dark shapes wheeled against the darkening sky at the edge of Camille’s vision. Just bats, but the black silhouettes made her think of crows, and because she couldn’t bear it she turned to Laurène, leaned in and kissed her. Something else she did without thinking, and the sense of freedom was exhilarating, even if there was danger in it.

Laurène’s lips opened to Camille’s, the kiss slow and careful, but deepening, as Laurène lifted her hand to Camille’s cheek, slid it around to the back of her head where her fingers burrowed beneath the plait, and when the kiss was finished, they set there for a while, foreheads pressed together, and the sweet taste of the kiss on both their lips.

The hood of the car was still warm beneath them, the breeze rolling in off the lake cold and carrying the scent of pine, but Camille was blind to it all, even to the black silhouettes skittering across the sky. It didn’t matter. Not the darkening twilight, or the smell of cigarette smoke from the bar on her clothes, nor that under normal circumstances this was the last place she’d want to be, and that not so very long ago all she’d wanted to do was to go home, to have a bath and wash off the grime of the day, as if by doing so she could scrub away her guilt and shame and ceaseless fear, and make herself forget Marion and the forest and all the little fragments of herself she’d left scattered behind, and all the women of Villefranche who’d ever found themselves lost in the woods.

None of it mattered. Because she was with Laurène, whom the forest took and then gave back, and there could be no place safer than this.


End file.
